Young boys

Reading books by the pool, a special summer edition, making books that can survive a day at the swimming pool, reading underwater, wearing diving goggles to read, a book for applying sun cream, a sudoku puzzle book, a book for fanning yourself, a book for topping up your tan, a book for looking intriguingly intellectual on the lawn, a book for shielding yourself from the sun...

What is a book? What is a library? What does it mean to publish? And does any of this have anything to do with summer? We think it does.

For four days, we will transform the museum and its surroundings into a laboratory for editorial creation and bibliographic reflection. We will explore the practice of making books, reflect on the relationship between books and summer, and collectively publish and create a small library to see us through the warmer months.

As we do every summer, we invite you to join this workshop led by Conchi Tabares and Iria Pero, two creators whose work centres on self-publishing and the fanzine universe.

Conchi Tabares (2000) is an artist, researcher and designer. Her work focuses primarily on reading as a hybrid concept that extends beyond literature into other formats, and on the ways literary forms are transformed when opened up to alternative modes of reading. Language, chance and attentiveness to everyday phenomena are among the elements that currently shape her practice. Since 2022, she has co-coordinated Pichi Fest, a self-managed transfeminist fanzine festival, together with fellow zinesters, and many of her zines can be found on her Instagram profile, @_conchipcion. She studied Fine Arts and Comprehensive Design and Image Management at Rey Juan Carlos University, and is currently completing an MA in Art Research and Creation at Complutense University of Madrid. 

Iria Pero (2001) is an arts mediator and visual artist. Iria's principal interest lies in working with discarded materials and exploring the notions of waste, residue and noise in contemporary culture through a variety of published formats. A graduate in Fine Arts from Complutense University of Madrid, Iria is currently studying for an MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture. Iria publishes fanzines under the name Peromedapereza. Iria also regularly runs self-publishing workshops and keeps a small fanzine library inside a dollhouse. Currently, Iria coordinates Index(a)1.1, an amateur fanzine cataloguing group at the Marcablanca community library.

Have you ever stopped to think about how the bonds between people are manifested? Friendship, family and romantic relationships, needs and plans, desire... The emotional fabric is packed with feelings and concepts that become invisible lines leading and connecting us, constantly tightening and slackening, sometimes without us even noticing.

On this occasion we propose to enrich the research project Un juego de cuerdas y sus 12 leyes [A String Game and Its 12 Laws] with a collective game dynamic in which we’ll explore these and other bonds in a palpable, sensory way through knots and links.

We invite you to get tangled up with us and let go of the rope with the artist and researcher Inés Sorlat, who will use her practice to move the strings. Thus begins Intermittences, with the focus on what is there but might not always be there, on what is tightened but might also slacken.

Inés Sorlat (Madrid, 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist and Audiovisual Communication graduate of the Carlos III University in Madrid. Her work combines audiovisual narrative, installation and sewing, investigating the bonds between people and the invisible laws that uphold them. This exploration led to Un Juego de Cuerdas y sus 12 leyes, a series of twelve conceptual installations that reflect on relationships as a single interconnected system.

In 2025 she presented the first two pieces, Ley 8 and Ley 11, and she is currently developing the following works in the series, visually representing the system and its strings, and, one by one, reinterpreting their laws.

Donde Continúan las Cosas is a group formed by past participants of our programmes for young people, united by their interest in culture, art and community work. The project aims to redefine relationships with the museum, fostering the self-management of the group members and involving them in the definition of programmes for young people.

FUGA is a space where we continue to promote autonomy, exploration and collective undertaking. We don't impose anything here and there are no closed hierarchies: the group members design the programme together.

After a first year of sharing, experimenting and learning—a year of discovering how difficult but how rewarding it is to create a genuinely collective space—the group embarks on this new phase with a clear aim: to create their own podcast.

The podcast will be a tool for engaging with the museum’s programmes and exhibitions, but also for looking beyond them. It will enable us to map the contemporary art scene, interview artists and curators, visit spaces, chat with cultural agents and make our own voice heard in what is happening right now.

We want FUGA to be a place where we can continue adding to a collective archive, where we can explore current initiatives together, formulate theories, ask questions and continue to engage with the museum from the perspective of our own interests and languages.

We’ll meet twice a week during the year in a friendly, horizontal and experimental setting to design the podcast, record episodes, explore topics, invite people and create a project that is truly ours.

We are Nails and Thumbtacks, a little group devoted to artistic experimentation through self-publishing and DIY, always creating through play. We aim to discover and generate multiple ways of materialising our ideas as a group. We explore different media like paper, video, sound, performance and even intangible things, playing with constant constructions and deconstructions.

If you’re between the ages of 13 and 21 and you’re interested in art, this is a space where you can freely experiment. You don’t need any prior knowledge, and you don’t need to be an extrovert; here we invent everything from scratch, together.

This year we’re focusing on transformation to explore what emerges from endings and new beginnings. We’ll invite guests who work in different disciplines like performance, textiles, image and film. We’ll also take trips and appropriate the museum for our creations.

Join us and discover the power of collective creation through play and artistic experimentation.

‘Maybe you can show us that TikTok that you saved ages ago that you thought was so funny/curious/interesting. Maybe we’ll want to stroll, rest, re-do.

I think we'll be a chaotic but creative group. Or maybe we'll get bored, but that's not bad either, right? We’ll visit friends, artists... people who’ll tell us their latest secret and, together, we’ll do something with it.’

Nails and Tacks is an activity aimed at young people aged 13 to 21, where they can discover new creating methods related to contemporary creation. It’s an open, collective space in which to investigate artistic strategies based on the principles of do-it-yourself and self-publishing.

On Fridays and weekends, we will hold workshops and meetings with artists, exploring our personal universes and seeking new ways to observe everyday life from an artistic perspective. You can sign up for a one-off session or for our ongoing sessions,  all of which will be different. Over the next few months, we would love to build a space in which to create, think and imagine together.

Quiosco Clandestino are Angie de la Lama and Leo D'Elio. As a collective, it was born in 2020 in the post-pandemic context from a reflection on the cultural circuits in which both organisers were part of. It was born as an organisation that supports artists or people interested in artistic creation, as well as creating their own projects related to self-publishing.

Angie de la Lama is an artist and designer from Seville based in Madrid. Her work moves between comics, illustration and experimental cinema. She also works as a cultural manager and, within this field, has created Skisomic fest, the first fanzine festival in Seville, and has set up the association Quiosco clandestino de promoción cultural. Angie combines her work as an artist and manager with the development of educational projects for different public and private institutions.

Leo D'Elio is an artist and cultural manager from Madrid. His practice revolves around the personal, the everyday, the public space and practices related to self-publishing such as fanzines, comics and sound experimentation. He is a staunch defender of amateurism and doing it 'badly'. He developed in his youth in the youth group of the 'sub21' museum following 'Duchamp & Sons' at the Whitechapel Gallery in London until he created with Angie in 2020 Quiosco Clandestino and Yina + Eol.